Rhythmyx

Of course, Interwoven is not the only CMS vendor that integrates with BEA. In fact, as WebLogic continues its run as the #1 or #2 (depending on who you talk to) application server, CMS vendors have been beating down BEA's doors to develop special connector applications. The latest is the "Rhythmyx Accelerator for BEA WebLogic" from Percussion...Read the Percussion / BEA release

It's tempting for CMS vendors to develop or resell portals, too, since many of their customers lack a robust content delivery environment. Vignette and Interwoven have done so, and now Percussion has jumped into the race -- helpfully noting that its offering is directed more at workgroups than enterprise integration. Think of it as MS Sharepoint running on Java. Percussion's portal offers several nice widgets for workgroups, but we should point out the significant difference between managing collaborative projects vs. the collaborative development of web content. For the former, a collaboration portal is useful, but for the latter, you really want to focus on the native collaborative workflow capabilities of your CMS (and most of them aren't very good at it)...Find out more about Rhythmyx Express Portal

CMS vendor Percussion is pitching their latest Version 6.0 of Rhythmyx not so much as an ECM product solution – but as the core of an interoperability strategy that enables ECM. This seems like a smart approach for a niche solution. The company has added a WSDK (Web Services Software Developer's Kit) and web services API, making it easier to pull and push content into and out of the Rhythmyx repository. Percussion also productized a WYSIWYG web forms tool (à la Ektron) previously developed by a channel partner. That all sounds good, but Rhythmyx V6 doesn't actually release until the end of July and it will be some months before Percussion's customers have put it through its paces. We'll let you know...

Like many CMS vendors, Percussion is trying to make its solution more "out-of-the-box." There's a fine line to walk, there, though, as largish buyers want something easy to prototype but highly extensible for enterprise roll-out. We're not sure whether Percussion's new offering walks that line well, but we like their description of a healthy niche in the sub-enterprise market. Here's what they say: "Rather than segmenting the mid-tier market by the size of the enterprise only, Percussion defines the mid-tier ECM market according to the unique content management needs of customers....these customers include midsize companies making strategic purchases, as well as Global 2000 corporations making tactical purchases..."Read about "Rhythmyx FastForward"

Percussion recently announced a dot-release of its Rythmyx CMS product. Most of the major changes in 5.6 revolve around redressing a traditional weakness of the product: spawning and managing multiple subsites in distributed environments. Good for them...but always test before you buy any product, especially those with "new" features...

When we last profiled NetworkWorld Fusion editor Adam Gaffin, his team was just selecting a new CMS package. Now Gaffin is chronicling the actual implementation through a very promising blog. His comments about the package NW selected (Percussion's Rhythmyx) could apply to most other products. Note especially Gaffin's discussion of the complexities of expiring content in state-transition workflows, as well as his critique of the templating system. On the latter, we must agree that one of the negative side-effects of most CMS implementations is the reinsertion of an engineer in between a designer and their templates...Check out Gaffin's Blog